Japan Closely Guards the Art of Besu-boru

by David Sanger (Mar 26, 1990)

Digitized
by Jessica Suchman and Catherine Nissley.

The
hottest movie in Tokyo this spring seems as distant from the Ginza as
the Iowa cornfields where it was filmed. "Field of Dreams," the
fantasy-on-a-diamond in which faith and a willingness to risk all
bring back the heroes of a golden age of baseball, has captivated the
Japanese, who can scarcely imagine living in a place as unpopulated
as Iowa and likely never heard of Shoeless Joe Jackson.

But
that should be no surprise. The lore of American baseball has always
been a source of fascination in Japan, but one that the Japanese are
happy to preserve as something of a distant fantasy. This is as much
of a besu-boru-fanatic society as any that you can find
outside the United States. But 117 years after the Shimbashi
Athletics first took to the field – in traditional wooden clogs –
Japanese baseball remains at once haunted by comparisons with the
game in America and as determined as ever to keep its version
distinctly Japanese.

These
days it seems everyone is chronicling Japan's struggle to reconcile
its envy of American baseball with what the sport has become here.
Robert Whiting's recent book, "You Gotta Have Wa," may be the
definitive history of how Japan turned baseball into a martial art, a
game that strives for perfection more than drama, for team spirit and
unity over spectacular individual performance.

Nonetheless,
just as there are always people looking for evidence that Japan is
becoming more like the rest of the world, there are those who want to
believe that Japanese baseball is becoming more American. This year
the temptations are great.

As
the Japanese season begins – Opening Day is April 7 – the country
is immersed in allegations that the star pitcher of the perpetual
champion Yomiuri Giants may have associated with gamblers, raising
the specter of a Japanese equivalent of the Pete Rose scandal. For
the first time, Japan's Central League will allow games to go on
until someone wins – or until the last train home is about to
depart – in an effort to eliminate what may be the most frustrating
statistic in all of Japanese baseball: Number of games ending in tie.

Then
there is the news, unsettling to some and welcome to others, that a
major Japanese spirits company has made its first investment in
American baseball, buying the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A farm team
that has swept the Southern League three times in seven years.

But
anyone rushing to the conclusion that the world is becoming a global
baseball diamond should turn on a television set anyplace in Japan,
any afternoon this week. For this is the start of the spring
championships for high school baseball, which engenders more passion,
more hometown rivalries, more rhetoric about "purity" and more
pressure to perform that anything Japan's professional leagues can
muster.

It
is in high school baseball that one can find evidence of how
different Japanese baseball is from the pick-up games of "Field of
Dreams." If American players got their start by idly throwing a
ball against the side of a barn, high school stars in Japan are
created by 365 days of practice.

"The
point is how to train, how to master a kind of spirit," says Masaru
Ikei, a professor at Keio University who frequently studies baseball
in Japan and the United States. "The coaches are just interested in
winning, not teaching the game. They have no worries about using the
same pitcher four days in a row, and that even makes a losing pitcher
a hero because he worked so hard."

What
makes the values of high school baseball so fascinating is how deeply
they affect professional ball. By the time a player makes it to the
big leagues, the conflict between pitcher and batter gives way to an
endurance contest between teams. The most important thing is not to
make a foolish mistake; that is why infielders are put through the
torturous "1,000 grounders" exercise, then expected to go out on
the field for a full game.

The
players, in short, resemble nothing more than more ordinary,
blue-suited employees of the companies that own their teams, bound by
a strict set of rules, willing to practice until they drop and work
for wages that American players would laugh at – and do. The
average big-leaguer in Japan made the equivalent of $138,000 last
year, far below his American counterpart's $490,000.

But
it is the American players who, in many ways, add the wild card to
Japanese baseball. They are hired, at salaries their Japanese
teammates resent, simply to add some excitement to games that can
often be remarkable for their low scores and lack of drama. Not too
much excitement, of course: Each team is limited to two foreign
players, and efforts to raise the limit, most recently this winter,
have regularly collapsed.

It
is a classic form of protectionism, but like all trade barriers here,
it seems bound to fall of its own weight in the seasons to come. Last
year, for the first time, two Americans won the Most Valuable Player
awards, Warren Cromartie of the Yomiuri Giants and Ralph Bryant of
the Kintetsu Buffaloes. It was the first time that foreigners had
swept the title in both the Central and Pacific Leagues in a single
year. People noticed.

It
is exactly this same instinct – a desire to pump more of America
into baseball here without actually drowning the Japanese character
of the game – that lies behind Suntory Ltd.'s purchase of the
Birmingham Barons.

Americans
may fear that baseball teams are about to go the way of Rockefeller
Center and Columbia Pictures, and they may be right. But Suntory says
it bought the Barons less out of a desire to become a big presence in
American baseball than to become one in Japan.

"Our
final goal is to create a new kind of entertainment here at home,
much as Disneyland did," said Mashide Kanzaki, a spokesman for the
company. "Japanese baseball companies have sent observers to
America before to learn, but they couldn't get anything. We decided
that to understand American baseball, we had to do everything, from
grounds keeping to finance."

If
that strikes non-Japanese as a mercenary approach to the national
pastime – applying the same principles to learning about baseball
teams that Toyota applied to learning about cars – it is a reminder
that Japan makes no apologies about treating baseball as a business
first, a sport second.

American
owners may pay homage to "the boys of summer" or the "good of
the game." In Japan, teams are tools of their companies, which will
be molded to fit corporate goals. Most lose money. But there are
other benefits. No one ever heard of Orix Corp., a leasing company,
until it bought a team and named it the Orix Braves. Now the leasing
business is booming, and Japan's best students are rushing to work
there. The Nippon Ham Fighters were owned, and named after, a
railroad company, a movie studio and a home construction firm before
they were renamed again to tout the glories of meat packing.

But
if baseball is supposed to be a business for the owners, it is not
expected to be a business for the players. The Seibu Lions, known for
strictness, prohibit players from side businesses and product
endorsements. And the graduates of high school baseball are, given
their roots, expected in particular to think of nothing but the game.

That
explains the controversy over Masumi Kuwata, the 21-year-old star
pitcher of the Giants, and a graduate of Japan's most famous high
school team. A recent book titled "Good-bye Masumi Kuwata, Good-bye
Professional Baseball" charged that Kuwata associated with a
suspected gambler, and told the gambler when he would be pitching –
something teams here keep secret until the last minute. The book
never charged that Kuwata helped anyone place bets, or profited
himself, except for receiving some large fees to help his friend in
some vague business deals. The Giants conducted an internal
investigation, declared Kuwata innocent and said they would sue the
author for libel.

As
in the Pete Rose case, there are many unanswered questions, and the
controversy rips through Japan's sports pages. It is enough to make
people nostalgic for the cornfield beginnings of baseball that never
were. But in the end, most people think Japan will settle the Kuwata
controversy in a quiet, Japanese way, just like it plays the game.

The
writer, a baseball enthusiast, covers business affairs from The New
York Times bureau in Tokyo.